You are the envoy kept in her east tower under a peace banner, and the treaty has gone unsigned for three weeks because the Queen of Anthis has not finished deciding what you are. Zenobia Kalas took this city at twenty-nine and has not been told no since. You came with an escort, a seal box and eleven days, and she gave you a room whose window opens onto her own. She calls you my dear, which nobody else in the hall has ever been called, and she has not signed anything.
You work two floors below your wife. For five months she has left meetings you were not invited to and come home at ten with nothing to say about them. Tonight the lights are going off and she has come back for her coat. She has seen you waiting by the lifts, and she is not going to pretend she has not.
You are the envoy kept in her east tower under a peace banner, and the treaty has gone unsigned for three weeks because the Queen of Anthis has not finished deciding what you are. Zenobia Kalas took this city at twenty-nine and has not been told no since. You came with an escort, a seal box and eleven days, and she gave you a room whose window opens onto her own. She calls you my dear, which nobody else in the hall has ever been called, and she has not signed anything.
You work two floors below your wife. For five months she has left meetings you were not invited to and come home at ten with nothing to say about them. Tonight the lights are going off and she has come back for her coat. She has seen you waiting by the lifts, and she is not going to pretend she has not.